SEO Checklist (2026): 54 Checks You Can Run Yourself
The 54 checks behind a full website SEO audit, from indexing and titles to backlinks, trust signals and AI search, with the free tool for each.
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By Szymon Kokot Published Updated 12 min read
What Is Your Website For? Website Goals by Business Type
Ask a business owner what their website is for and the usual answer is "to get more customers" or "to get more traffic". Neither is something a page can be built around. Website goals are more specific than that, and they differ more between businesses than most people expect. An online store, a software company, a plumber and a consultancy can all have a tidy, modern site, yet each site has to produce a different thing. This article sets out the main goal for each type of business, how the kind of client changes it, and why I think the goal should be named before any money goes into SEO.
In short: A website has one main goal, and it is set by how the business gets paid: an order for a store, a trial or demo for software, a call or booking for a local business, a conversation for a consultancy. Who the clients are decides what they need to see before they act. You need to name both before SEO.
Why Is "More Traffic" Not a Website Goal?
"More traffic" can be the goal only if we assume, or already made sure, the website is getting the right kind of traffic and the website is well designed to prompt the user in the right direction. A blind "more traffic" is nothing more than hoping volume over quality is the way to go, which isn't usually correct.
What Is the Main Goal of a Website?
The main goal is the one action that the business exists online to get. Analytics people call it the macro conversion, a term Avinash Kaushik set out in an older but still useful post on macro and micro conversions. For a store it is a completed order. For most other businesses it is the first contact that can lead to a sale.
Around it sit smaller goals, the micro conversions. These are the steps a visitor takes on the way, or instead: reading a pricing page, checking opening hours, downloading a sample, signing up for a newsletter. Kaushik's point was that people do not come to a site only to buy. They come to research, to get support, to look for a job.
Smaller goals matter because most visitors will never do the main thing on the first visit. They also tell you whether the site is working for the people who are not ready yet. But there is still only one main goal. If you cannot pick one, the site will try to do everything and every page will end up asking for something different.
What Are the Website Goals for Each Type of Business?
The table gives the short version. The sections under it explain each row.
| Business type | Main goal | Smaller steps that count | What the visitor needs first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online store | A completed order | Add to cart, account, email signup | Total cost, delivery time, returns |
| SaaS | A trial, demo or signup | Pricing page view, comparison read, docs visit | Proof it fits their problem; a way to try it |
| Local business | A call, booking or visit | Directions click, review read, hours check | That you are real, close and well reviewed |
| Consultancy or professional services | A qualified conversation | Case study read, team page read | Evidence of similar work for similar clients |
| Larger company | Several: leads, hires, partner standing | Case read, vacancy view, event signup | Different for each audience |
| Founder-led small firm | Trust in one person, then contact | About page, article read, free tool used | Who does the work and whether to trust them |
Online stores
The goal is an order, and it is the easiest goal to measure and the easiest to lose. Baymard Institute's running tally puts the average documented cart abandonment rate at 70.22%, averaged from 50 studies. Much of that cannot be avoided: 42% of US shoppers in Baymard's survey said they left because they were only browsing.
The rest can be. Among shoppers who did intend to buy, the top reason for leaving was extra costs that turned out too high (40%), ahead of slow delivery (20%), not trusting the site with card details (19%) and an unsatisfactory returns policy (13%). So a store reaches its goal by answering three questions early: what will it cost in total, when will it arrive, and can I send it back. The e-commerce SEO checklist covers the search side of the same pages.
SaaS
The goal is a trial, a demo or a signup. A store sells something the buyer already understands; software often has to explain the problem before it can offer the fix. That makes articles, guides and comparison pages part of the product's shop window.
Explaining is only half of it, though. In TrustRadius's 2024 survey of 2,164 technology buyers, the most consulted resources were product demos (54%), prior experience (52%) and free trials (40%), and 78% chose a product they had heard of before they started researching. TrustRadius sells a review platform, so it has an interest here, but the pattern is plausible: buyers want to see the product work. Content earns the visit; the trial or the visible price closes it. Timing matters too, which I covered in when a SaaS startup should start SEO.
Local businesses
The goal is a call, a booking or a visit, and the website is often the second thing a customer sees. The first is the map. Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, meaning how well known the business is, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking.
The site then confirms the choice. In BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey of 1,002 US adults, 97% said they read reviews for local businesses, yet only 34% were ready to buy after reading a positive one. The other 66% did more research, and 54% went to the business's website. That is the site's job: services, prices where possible, real photos, opening hours and the people. More on the map side in local pack and SEO and the local SEO checklist.
Consultancies and professional services
The goal is a conversation with someone who could become a client. Nobody buys a six-month project from a web page; they decide whether a call is worth their time.
I have not found a solid public number showing that case studies or testimonials win this kind of work, so treat what follows as reasoning. Most buyers of expensive services arrive already pointed at the firm by a referral, a partner or a tender. The site's job is to confirm what they were told and to give them something to forward to colleagues: projects with named clients and outcomes, and the people they would work with.
Larger companies
Above a certain size a site stops having one audience. Buyers want cases and a contact. Candidates want to know what working there is like. Partners and journalists want facts. Nielsen Norman Group's research on About Us pages lists job seekers, journalists and investors among their readers, alongside customers.
I looked at one IT consultancy with several hundred employees whose About page is, in effect, a recruitment page: the headline is about people and the first button leads to vacancies. That is a reasonable choice. For a firm that sells its staff's time, hiring can matter as much as leads. Such a site has several goals, one per audience, and each needs its own section and its own measure.
Founder-led small firms
When one person does the work, the site has to earn trust in that person. The service is usually invisible and looks identical on paper to every competitor's, so the visitor is deciding about someone, not something. A name, a face, a plain account of how the work is done and a sample of it carry more than any list of services.
My own site is in this group. Its job is a message through the contact form, so the price and an example report are there to see before anyone writes.
How Do Your Clients Change the Goal?
The business type sets the goal. The client decides how big a step it is and what has to be on the page before they take it.
| Selling to consumers | Selling to businesses | |
|---|---|---|
| Who decides | One person, sometimes two | A group; user and approver often differ |
| How long | Minutes to days | Weeks to months |
| What is at risk | Money and the hassle of a return | Money, time and the buyer's standing at work |
| Main doubt | Will it arrive, can I return it | Will it work for us, can I defend this choice |
| Realistic goal | Buy now | Start a trial, book a call, send a message |
| Proof that helps | Reviews, clear costs, returns policy | Cases, client names, trials, pricing |
Nielsen Norman Group's comparison of B2B and B2C websites (from 2016, and still accurate in my view) adds a detail that changes how pages are written: a business site serves both "choosers" and "users". The person who will use the product and the person who signs off the spend read different pages and have different worries.
Business buyers also want to get far on their own. Gartner reports that 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience, while noting that purely self-service purchases are far more likely to end in regret. So the site has to carry most of the explaining, and a way to reach a person still has to be there.
One caution about the table. The better dividing line is cost and reversibility. A cheap monthly tool paid for on a company card is bought like a consumer product. A fitted kitchen is bought by a household the way a company buys software: slowly, with research, by more than one person. Place your business by how big and how hard to undo the purchase is.
Why Does the Goal Come Before SEO?
SEO brings visitors from search. It pays only when those visitors can be turned into the one thing the site is for. The goal therefore decides which searches are worth ranking for, which pages matter most and what a good result looks like. A store cares about category and product pages. A local business cares about the map. A consultancy may care about a dozen narrow searches made by very few people.
Google's own reviewers start in the same place. Its Search Quality Rater Guidelines (September 2025 edition) say: "The first step in understanding a page is figuring out its purpose." Raters then judge how well the page achieves that purpose. The guidelines are instructions for human reviewers and no single rating moves a page up or down, but they show how Google thinks about quality: a page is good at something, never good in general.
It is also the first thing I ask before an SEO audit, because the same finding can be urgent on one site and irrelevant on another depending on what the site is for.
When Is SEO Not the Right Spend?
Naming the goal sometimes shows that search is not where the next customer comes from. That is worth knowing before paying for anything. SEO is likely a weak investment when:
- Nobody searches for what you sell yet, because the category is new
- You close a handful of large accounts a year through direct sales
- Work arrives by referral and the site only confirms what the buyer was told
- You are at capacity, and the limit is your time
- The checkout or contact step loses people anyway, so more visitors would only mean more lost visitors
- Margins are thin on products where marketplaces hold the first page
None of these means the website can be neglected. A referred buyer still looks you up, and a site that is slow, unclear or out of date can lose a sale that was already won. It means the money is better spent on the page than on reaching it.
What Should You Decide Before Working on Your Website?
Five questions, in this order. Written answers of a sentence each are enough.
- What does the site have to produce? One thing: an order, a signup, a call, a message.
- Who is it for? The buyer, and anyone else who has to agree.
- What do they need to see before acting? Price, proof, people, terms.
- Which smaller steps count? The ones that show a visitor is getting closer.
- How will you know? A number you can check each month.
If the second question has several answers, as it does for larger companies, answer the other four once per audience.
FAQ
What is the main purpose of a website?
To produce the one action the business depends on online. For a store that is an order; for software, a trial or demo; for a local business, a call or booking; for a consultancy, a conversation. Informing visitors and looking professional support that purpose. A site with no named action tends to do neither well.
Can a website have more than one goal?
It can have one main goal and several smaller ones, such as a pricing page view or a newsletter signup. Larger organisations are the exception: they serve buyers, job candidates and partners, and each audience has its own goal. In that case each audience needs its own section and its own measure, so the goals do not compete on the same page.
How do I know if my website is reaching its goal?
Count the main action each month: orders, signups, calls, form messages. Then count one or two smaller steps that lead to it, such as visits to the pricing or contact page. If visits rise and the main action does not, the page is the problem. If both are low, being found is the problem.
Are B2B website goals different from B2C goals?
Usually, because the step is bigger. A consumer can buy in minutes, so the goal is the purchase. A business purchase involves several people and takes weeks, so the realistic goal is a trial, a call or a message. The better test is the size of the purchase and how hard it is to undo.
Should I set website goals before investing in SEO?
Yes. The goal decides which searches are worth ranking for and which pages matter. Without it, SEO work is judged by traffic, and traffic that cannot become an order, a signup or an enquiry is a cost. Naming the goal first can also show that search is not your best channel right now.
A website is for one thing, and that thing follows from how the business gets paid and who pays it. Once it is written down, most other decisions about the site get easier, including whether SEO deserves a budget at all. If it does, the SEO checklist is a good place to start on your own, and an SEO audit will show which of those points your site already meets.